Newly trained doctors-you need to know this

[2020Raquet]

DSS3 is about to be a newly qualified FY2 doctor along without about 8,000 from his cohort (number who qualified this year). There are about 1000 jobs for them to apply for in the NHS this year. So we, the tax payer have paid an average of £250,000 to £327,009 to train these doctors over the past 7-9 years and 87% will not have a job.

A simple google search (appreciate that not be the most accurate, so happy to be corrected if based on facts) show that 20,060 doctors immigrated to the U.K. in 2024.

DSS3 is emigrating because he has little other choice.

The doctors strikes are not based on money, but the fact that they come out of uni with £100’s of £1,000’s of debt in a job apparently vital in the U.K., but with no job prospects!!

AIBU to believe the system has failed.

DSS3 is emigrating because he has little other choice.

and he is about to qualify?

I bet he hasn’t actually secured anything and he’s instead hoping to emigrate

So you are saying people who are already partly trained (oranges) are applying for training contracts to become fully trained (plums) designed to train people who have just completed FY2 (apples) which people who have just completed FY2 (apples) are applying for? We don’t want oranges, we want plums and the contracts apples are losing out on are designed for apples.

No, as forward planning that would not be a good idea

What makes sense both economically and in terms of the cohesion of our society is to prioritise British graduates for training posts (like every other country does).

I have to say my foreign surgeon was much better than my English one but she was a seamstress of god like levels so not a fair comparison probably.

I do find when I am with the African GP I do feel it’s a bit sketchy. They are doing things by the book. And they might be very experienced. But I am more comfortable with the British GP who I feel understands the strange language you often have to use to describe babies and toddlers. It’s not every day language to a non English speaker trying to get across the nuance of a situation when babe themselves are babes. You know you are using words which have loading or not (like colicky, snippy) and it is quite confusing trying to describe their normal temperament and the nuance of their current temperament as best as possible so they have a chance to judge it.

^This or we need to fund more doctors positions many juniors/trainee GPs/GPs work ridiculous hours for no extra money. They could of course work less hours; a standard full time position for everyone else in the NHS is 37 hours a week coming down to 36 next year and recruit more medical staff but this would require money to pay the extra wages money which the NHS doesn’t currently have.

So we should be dependent of doctors from abroad rather than train our own? Why?

I’m not sure we are “dependent” on doctors from abroad.
But surely it should be about the best candidate for the job (assuming everything else is equal and that all candidates have the required standard of written and spoken English) so some applicants from abroad may have more knowledge experience than their UK counterparts. Although I believe we need a good mixture of training and experience within any team. I have lots of experience but retirement is on the horizon so it’s important that I pass my experience onto more junior staff and I also learn from them because they trained in a different way to me and have knowledge and skills I don’t have. Often we also may have different approaches to things and depending on where we’ve worked and we can all learn from each other for the good of the patient. We currently have a complicated problem with a patient I’ve worked in another trust and saw a different approach my colleague hadn’t seen we are currently trialing it.
Experience and pooling knowledge (ofter gained in different settings ) in health care is so important.

Exactly this.

As I understand it and correct me if I’m wrong they’re not counterparts, that’s the whole point. Doctors from abroad further along in their career are applying for lower jobs thus ousting UK doctors. UK doctors are then prevented from getting to that level and may well be better (having had gold standard uk training ) if given the chance but they’re not so they leave and so it goes on in an increasing depressing circle ousting UK doctors even though we as tax payers are funding them. I’d rather have UK doctors trained in this country treating me and vulnerable family members and I’d like poorer countries to keep their own doctors so they have medical staff to treat them.

I mean why should British young people expect to have a job anyway? Seems like a much more sensible and sustainable plan for them to borrow huge sums off the government, have a fortune spent on their training and then sit around on benefits or do some unskilled and underpaid job eventually having to be topped up by universal credit when they have a family.

Anyway they don't have anything to complain about because the decent ones with a bit of get up and go can leave their families and friends and emigrate to the other side of the planet and try their chances there. Obviously they'll be last in the queue for work as these countries actually prioritise their own workers.

My feeling is that it should be the best person for the job based on a planetry wide competition for each role. Otherwise it just wouldn't be fair. Especially when there is only one possible employer, like the NHS and workers have no where else to go. They just need to get on their bikes, sorry I mean long haul flights.

It's clear that in a nation of 60 million plus we will never be able to find enough capable and willing young people to be nurses and doctors due to flaws in the national character and just generally being a bit shite. I am not being racist as people have come to Britain from all over the world and within one generation they shift from being hard working immigrants to being as useless as everyone else. Perhaps some kind of issue with the tapwater?

I think some British teenagers just need to stop doing pointless things like revising for science exams when they could be scrolling on their phones instead. It's clearly a waste of their time. Half of them have given up already and it's about time the others read the room.

Spot on.

The situation is completely worthy of this level of scorn.

Well said. There are too many people in this country that hate British people, even if they are British themselves. Maybe it’s a form of self hatred externalised.

We could save an awful lot of expense in trying to have a 'fit for purpose' education system too. Mind you, it might be hard to fulfill the tax burden to pay for all the state employees (as pp said, the NHS is a very big employer) if we don't produce anyone useful enough to contribute to the finances from the private sector.
If only we had some sort of limitless tradeable resource to bring in an income.

The government have already started the process of reducing the recruitment of of overseas-trained medics to under 10% of intake, and to prioritise homegrown medical graduates for training positions. It is now very hard for a medical graduate who has graduated overseas to get a GMC licence and enter the Foundation years.
The plans for England are set out in the 10-Year Health Plan for England - see Chapter 7 for workforce changes. More specifically, the 10-Year Workforce Plan is due to be published soon, now that the calls for evidence stage has finished.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/10-year-health-plan-for-england-fit-for-the-future/fit-for-the-future-10-year-health-plan-for-england-accessible-version#chapter-7-an-nhs-workforce-fit-for-the-future

https://www.gov.uk/government/calls-for-evidence/10-year-workforce-plan

There's a summary in this Guardian article from 2nd July this year.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jul/02/nhs-in-england-told-to-slash-recruitment-of-overseas-trained-medics

Who's saying the UK doctors are sub par? Surely they must be ok, to have reached that stage of their careers?

I'd rather have a perfectly good UK trained Dr than a stunningly brilliant overseas trained Dr, if that means being part of an overall system where the UK trains and employs our own graduates.

It's like if I wanted a decorator to paint my living room. I don't want or need the best painter, one that has many years or experience and advanced painting techniques that mean they can restore murals (to compare with our Drs competing with overseas Drs further on in their careers). I just want a decorator that's capable of doing a decent job of my living room.

...

It's interesting that it's often left-wing people who want this "open competition" from foreign workers (I am generally very left-wing myself!). But it actually seems a very right-wing idea to have competition for everything rather than looking at the wider picture of making sure the population have reasonable employment and living conditons, and society is ticking over cohesively. Not sure I'm explaining this very well...! But the left really seem to abandon core principles whenever something relates to migration.

Exactly. If it wasn't such a vital topic, it would be a great joke.
This is why so many young people are either leaving (or planning to once quaified) or giving up and deciding to leave on benefits or a very low income and stay with their parents. There is no incentive to bother working and trying hard anymore. And that's before you even start on the crazy housing market.

Why just ‘starting the process’? Why not immediately make it the same as other jobs, where you can ONLY recruit from abroad if you cannot find sufficiently qualified staff here? It just requires a simple change in categorising registrar posts for immigration. No chapters on workforce planning that have no legal effect, or targets required.

If we guaranteed every nurse doctor physio student trained in GB a job then where is the competition to work harder, learn more and evolve.

Choose a career at 17 and we guarantee you a steady income till retirement as long as you tick a few boxes along the way.

I agree the majority of jobs should go to British graduates and they do - as evidence by our own statistics.

Just because you can not get the job you want, on the day that you want it does not mean some bloody foreigner stole it from you. Maybe you were not deemed ready or maybe your references were not good enough.

No competition in any profession will hinder progress and development of that profession. Complacency and arrogance will ensue

What other UK graduates have to compete against all other global graduates for a UK job? UK medical graduates also have to compete with other UK medical graduates just like any other UK professional graduate has to.

As for jobs not being ‘stolen’ by a ‘foreigner’; when thousands of UK jobs that are the next stage in the career progression are given to overseas applicants leaving 48% of British FY2s unemployed then of course it is the fault of the system that does not offer any priority to UK workers for UK jobs.

sorry there is no evidence that 48% of british FY2 are unemployed and their jobs got stolen by overseas doctors. Even the BMAs own study showed that many ha
d not bothered to apply.....

Why do you keep using inflammatory language of ‘jobs got stolen’? 48% of FY2 did not get a training place. Are you saying 48% did not bother to apply for a job? Because a thousands were desperate to find a training place annd failed and were competing on an equal footing with over 20,000 overseas candidates who should not have even been considered until British candidates had either been offered a place or found incapable of doing the job.

I use the word stolen becaus that is what the resident doctors say.

the BMA did their own survey and 30% of the FY2s surveyed did not bother to apply . 59% of training jobs went to British trained grads - I do think it should be a min of 75% but if british grads did not apply then they can not say they did not get a job because of IMGS. IMGS took jobs that were available and they applied for.

Sorry not seeing thousands of unemployed doctors anywhere. Many are in non trainng posts which are as good as the training post, some have taken time out and gone to Oz, NZ etc, some are doing research.

So please tell me where 48% of FY2s are unemployed because that stat does not exist.

The FY2's aren't unemployed as, by definition, they're FY2...

And those who you say are taking time out/doing research/going to Aus etc are likely in that group who 'did not bother'.

Having worked non-training posts they're definitely not as good as training jobs. They're also rather thin on the ground as trusts face hiring freezes. The non-training job I did whilst I built up my CV for my ultimate specialty doesn't exist anymore.

Plus do you really think every single FY2 did the BMA survey (not all doctors are BMA members for one)?

The FY2's aren't unemployed

They are when they complete their FY2 year and don’t have employment lined up.